I’m back from a couple

I’m back from a couple of days in South Dakota; not much to report except that I bumped into a lot of Power Line readers there. Turns out that, for one, the judge before whom I argued a motion this afternoon is a reader. This makes me think I should check our archives to see whether I have ever paid adequate tribute to the extraordinary fairness, wisdom and erudition of the South Dakota bench. Probably not…my South Dakota reminiscences have focused more on beer and shotgun stores.
I had hoped that after being incommunicado for two days, I would return to a (relatively) Lott-less world. No such luck. See, for example, this disgusting opinion piece by Jesse Jackson in USA Today titled “Can Lott–and GOP–Change?” Bill Clinton, too, has been denouncing the Republicans as “hypocritical” since Lott merely said publicly what all Republicans say privately. “How do you think they got a majority in the South anyway?” Clinton asks. Think about that for a moment. Clinton, himself a Southerner, believes that the Republicans achieved a majority in his home region by appealing to those who still believe in the Dixiecrat vision of segregation. What a stunning insult to tens of millions of Americans–most of them far better people and citizens than Clinton.
Not to brag or anything, but you heard it here first–even before the BET fiasco had been broadcast, we were already reporting that in his interview, Lott leaped into the arms of affirmative action to save himself from being attacked as a bigot–thereby accepting the liberal premise that those are the options, affirmative action advocate or racist. Once he did this, the party’s principled, colorblind position on race matters was fatally compromised. Lott has done incalculable damage through his pathetic attempt to hold on to power for a few more weeks. His demise can’t come too soon.